While many have criticized the federal government’s decision to have Statistics Canada stop requiring Canadians to fill out a long-form census, one proponent of the decision remains steadfast in its support.
The Fraser Institute has been “pilloried and criticized in both the mainstream media and among the country’s political and academic elites for our support for making the 2011 long-form census voluntary, rather than mandatory,” said its president, Brett Skinner.
He explained that his free enterprise think tank opposes the mandatory long-form census because of its core belief that Canadians should not be forced to disclose private and “non-essential” personal information to the government.
“In its current form, the long-form census requires Canadians to complete 40 burdensome pages of intrusive personal questions,” Skinner said.
“Canadians are forced to disclose this information without good cause. The census has simply become a cheap way for academics, economists and social scientists to get information that should be acquired using market surveys of the kind that are routinely conducted on a voluntary basis.”